Who am I?
Hailing from the landlocked and flat prairies of Canada, I serendipitously ended up studying corals of the Great Barrier Reef at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia. My PhD project aims to develop an eco-evolutionary model of coral thermotolerance in the context of climate change (see my Research tab for more info!). My primary supervisor is Prof. Sean Connolly at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, as well as A/Prof. Mia Hoogenboom in the ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies and Prof. Madeleine van Oppen at the University of Melbourne.

Research Interests
I started as a behavioural ecologist, but now focus on evolutionary questions at the population level using mechanistic models in R. Ultimately, I hope to combine aspects of both animal behaviour and eco-evolutionary modelling to better predict the responses of threatened populations to anthropogenic climate change. 

For more information, check out my Research tab!

​If you are interested in collaborating on a project or seeking a statistics consultant, fee free to contact me!
​
Ink'd!
Upon dissecting cuttlefish, take care to avoid nipping the ink sac!
Experience
I completed my BSc (Hons.) at my hometown university, the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Here, I worked on a number of projects over my undergrad. Prof. James Hare supervised my Honours project on Richardon's ground squirrel ecology, stress physiology and communication. I also travelled to Newfoundland, Canada to conduct fieldwork with Prof. Gail Davoren's lab, evaluated Bayesian vs. frequentist methods for estimating low-data matrix model parameters in Prof. Darren Gillis's lab, conducted radioimmunoassays for blood corisol levels with Prof. Gary Anderson's lab, and conducted microsats for lamprey population genetics in Margaret Docker's lab. 

After my Honours, I began a research-based MSc at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada with Profs. Maud Ferrari and Doug Chivers. My MSc project examined how aquatic prey such as fish and tadpoles communicate predation threats using aquatic chemicals. I also interned in the Groupe Mémoire et Plasticité Comportementale/l'Université de Caen-Normandie in France with Prof. Ludovic Dickel.

I have 7 years of experience coding in R programming for data analysis and statistical models. I help tutor first year classes on statistics and introductory modelling at JCU and help instruct software carpentry R courses to researchers through the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation and the JCU CodeR-TSV club.